Of Interest

From College Librarian (and all around excellent guy) David Pilachowski:

A fair question is “How can we be sure that new Sawyer Library, as it will be called, will provide a long-term answer to campus library needs for 50-100 years?” With the assistance of the Bohlin Cywinski Jackson architects, and the involvement of the Stetson/Sawyer Building Committee, librarians and information technologists, and the President’s Senior Staff, the building has been designed to meet changing needs over the years ahead. In particular, the collection area will accommodate compact shelving on all levels; an off-site shelving facility can accommodate growing collections while ensuring that users are not squeezed out by books; raised floors and demountable walls in areas most impacted by technology changes will facilitate repurposing space; and standard floor to ceiling heights will allow conversion of selective collection space to such people-centric functions as classrooms and academic support should that be desired.

1) The College ought to put the plans on-line so that the rest of us can take a peak. (UPDATE: Here are some details. Thanks to Pilachowski for the link.)

2) I have a great deal of faith in Pilachowski, Professor Michael Brown and all the other folks engaged in this project. I bet that the new Stetson/Sawyer (or INSERT-YOUR-NAME-HERE) will be fantastic.

3) I still wish that the College had not engaged in this particular spending spree, but, at this point, there is no going back.

4) What is the carbon emissions impact of this new construction? Williams won’t tell you! Nor will it include that impact in its aren’t-we-special report on carbon emissions. This is the main environmental hypocrisy of Williams: We claim to be reducing carbon emissions, but then we don’t count the carbon emissions associated with new construction.

5) My main concern is with “repurposing space.” What percentage of the total floor space is devoted to books and periodicals? My prediction is that, within a decade, less than 10% of that space will be needed. Anything not online, and easily reachable via Kindle/Ipad/Android, will be invisible and unwanted. As long as most/all of that space can, easily, be turned into classrooms, meeting spaces and so on, I am satisfied.

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8 Responses to “What About the New Library?”

jeffz says:

Can’t wait to see the campus look like this … it is going to be a massive improvement, and the gorgeous stretch from Paresky to the new library will truly feel like a campus center. Also glad to hear the library is being designed with adaptability in mind. It really is way too soon (and may ALWAYS be too soon) to contemplate getting rid of a substantial collection of books, but the college would be crazy not to prepare for that eventuality 15-20 years down the line, and conversion to more / classroom / student / electronic media space is a highly probable occurrence, at some point.

Even in hindsight, I still like this project. It still would have been enormously expensive to renovate Sawyer while building badly needed faculty office space, even if you don’t believe that it necessarily would cost more than this project as it was expected to do. Yes, blowing up a 40 year old library seems troubling. But it was a massive mistake from the beginning, both in design and siting, and did not (and could not) contemplate the technological revolution forthcoming when built, and this is creating the campus Williams should have for the next century. Why spend millions to do a half-assed job, which any attempt to repurpose Sawyer would have inevitably been; just suck it up and get it right for the long-term future of the college. I think in light of the crisis, this project would have started several years later, but think it would have been an egregious mistake to try to work with, whenever the project was prudent to begin, the existing structures. These plans look spectacular, both in terms of the building itself and the overall future of the center of campus. And it sounds like the delay was a blessing in disguise as it left time for some strategic rethinking and gave the campus a badly needed rest from the years of constant construction disruptions.

It’s just too bad a parking lot has to mar this center campus green, but there is no way around that due to the church. Hope they do a lot of creative trees and plantings in and surrounding it to make it as little a distraction as possible from the newly-verdant campus core.

The emissions from all college buildings are included in the annual emissions reports, including newly constructed buildings. The more buildings Williams constructs, the harder it will be to meet our emissions goals.

The top line of all of those predictions is our “business as usual” model, and you’ll note the increase around 2013 – that’s the predicted increase from the new library, though the timing of that increase is a complete guess at this point.

Perhaps you should try investigating some of the information that is publicly available before claiming that “Williams won’t tell you.” If you don’t find what you’re looking for in the public information, you could also try *asking* for it before claiming that nobody will give it to you.

Apologies! I should have double checked with you before posting this. But, allow me to correct that error.

1) What is the projected total carbon emissions of building the new Stetson/Sawyer? I know that the College (through your good work) does a great job of measuring carbon emissions from the operations of all buildings. (And kudos to you for being transparent with your data and results.) But I want to know the carbon emissions are for the construction process itself.

2) To the extent that you don’t have that data handy, would you mind passing along the question to Bohlin Cywinski Jackson architects? They may not have an exact number, but I bet that they could provide a rough estimate.

One thing I like about this plan is that the facade of Stetson appears to dominate the view. I hope that the facing-Paresky side of the new portion of the library facade is kept as inobtrusive and light (as opposed to weighty) as possible so as not to detract from that historic and well-loved portion of campus. I am a bigger fan than average, I think, of the new construction on campus, but the one huge error was eliminating the far more site-appropriate and graceful facade of the Adams in favor of the Trump theater. (Baxter I was happy to see go as it was an awful building functionally and mediocre-at-best, and that is generous, aesthetically). I hope the college had learned from that mistake, and will do everything possible to keep Stetson in the foreground.

@David: Are there examples of that type of information out there for similar sized buildings? Could we make a reasonable guess?

I also agree (for what feels like the 50th time) that honey is better than vinegar. Asking for the info, and then asking again publicly, is generally a better-received method of trying to obtain what you want than trying to publicly shame an institution (especially when that institition, for better or worse, doesn’t care about your platform)

The actual energy related to construction is tricky for any number of reasons, mostly having to do with how that energy is metered and monitored.

First, a significant portion of the energy used in construction of the new academic buildings was included in our fy08 report – the increased energy use from that basically equaled the decreases we achieved that year through conservation. The energy that was included was that which we have records of – the steam from the heating plant that was used to cure the concrete, and the electricity that was used. What wasn’t included was what we didn’t have records for – fuel used in the construction machines, primarily.

We’ll be working on better monitoring of all energy used on the construction of the new library, and that energy will certainly be included in our emissions total, but getting an estimate beforehand would be … challenging. Not least because we don’t know right now when it will be constructed, and the season construction happens in has a huge impact on energy use.

It also brings up interesting questions of boundaries – what emissions do we consider to be “Williams” and what don’t we? What about the embodied energy in all of the materials that are part of the construction process? What about transportation of those materials to campus? What about disposal of the construction waste? Are those “Williams” emissions, or do they belong to the companies that build the materials, transport them, recycle them, burn them? We don’t have the answers to those questions, and I think they’re pretty fascinating. They lead in to discussions of where the lever points for change really are and how to best use them.

Amy: Thanks for these comments. (And any student reading this thread and interested in environmental issues at Williams should go meet Amy and Stephanie Boyd in Hopkins. They do cool work!)

t also brings up interesting questions of boundaries – what emissions do we consider to be “Williams” and what don’t we? What about the embodied energy in all of the materials that are part of the construction process? What about transportation of those materials to campus? What about disposal of the construction waste? Are those “Williams” emissions

Yes. It seems obvious to me that those are Williams emissions. If we don’t build Stetson/Sawyer, then that steel won’t be smelted (?), the truck delivery it to the construction site won’t be moving and so on.

We want to compare total carbon emissions in two scenarios: Williams builds it and Williams does not build it. Everything that is different between the two scenarios should be counted.

I think that this is important because I think that the carbon emissions associated with the construction itself is very large.

Would you be willing to ask Bohlin Cywinski Jackson architects to provide an estimate?

While I hope that the new library is designed with flexibility in mind, I’m not holding my breath that forecasting the future this time will be accurate either. I was at Williams while Sawyer Library was designed, and a lot of thought went into making it future-proof. For example, the side away from Main Street was envisioned as where library expansion would occur.

Since the current building agenda eventually became, “Let’s get rid of Sawyer,” everyone conveniently forgets that the college did try to think of future scenarios back in the mid-70’s. It just didn’t do a great job of it. And I’m not sure everyone’s IQ has increased by 50 points in the past 30 years.

If it were me, I’d build a semi-disposable library. Then in three decades years, when things have changed significantly yet again, the college wouldn’t have to spend as much money ripping down the soon-to-be-built library. But, donors don’t want to give money to build a building that will be pulled down in 30 years, so that idea probably won’t fly….